2006-03-26 04:00:00 PDT Jerirot, Kenya -- Fatima Isaaq arrived at the dusty clearing at 10 in the morning. For the next six hours she waited, squatting, as temperatures soared above 100 degrees under a merciless sun, until, finally, it was her turn to receive her family's sustenance for the next month: half a jug of cooking oil and two bags of rice and maize.

Gripping the jug and one of the bags, Isaaq, 25, shuffled the 200 yards back to her family's hut, her red dress billowing around her fragile, willowy frame. Two neighbors carried the other bag and Isaaq put the food inside the hut, then hurried outside to start a cooking fire. The last time she and her six children had eaten was at 7 that morning -- a flavorless concoction of ground maize left over from last month's food aid delivery.

"For some time, at least, life will be a little easier," she said.

Until last month, Isaaq, like 90 percent of the 3.5 million people in northeastern Kenya, was a nomad whose family herded its livestock through the vast bush from one oasis to another. Last winter, as the worst drought to hit East Africa in decades entered its fourth year, the family's 30 cows collapsed from lack of water and food. In February, their 60 sheep and goats died, dropping in the bush near dried-out riverbeds and wells that had been empty for months.

Now Isaaq's family -- her husband, Nur Muhammad, and their children, ranging in ages from 1 to 10 -- have no livestock to sell, and nothing of their own to eat or drink. They left the bush and moved to Jerirot, an impoverished settlement of about 6,000 former nomads who have also lost their cattle to drought. They are among the estimated 17 million people across Kenya, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Djibouti and Sudan who are surviving almost entirely on meager food rations distributed by international aid agencies.

And even that food is in danger of running out. According to Betty Kweyu, head of the local office of CARE International, the Atlanta-based relief organization, her agency's warehouses here have enough maize and rice to help 110,000 of the worst-affected people in the area around Jerirot only until the end of next week.

"After that," she said, "I don't know."

According to hospital officials in Kenya, "dozens" are known to have died in the unforgiving heat since December. Medical and aid officials say the true number is much higher because nomad deaths go largely unreported. They say at least 500,000 Kenyan children face the threat of starvation.

The United Nations said it needs $170 million to feed the Kenyans affected by drought. But so far it has only raised $74.6 million, including $29 million donated by the United States.

At the same time, streams of nomadic families are emerging from the low, leafless bush, no longer able to provide for themselves. As much as 90 percent of the livestock has died in some parts of the country. In Garissa, a northeastern district with a population of about 400,000 people on the border with Somalia, nearly half the population now depends entirely on food aid to survive, double the number from October, Kweyu said.

She said CARE, the only agency that distributes food and water aid in Garissa, is already running short on supplementary feed for malnourished children and pregnant and nursing women. About 28,000 women and children in Garissa require the supplement, she said, but the agency only has enough to distribute among 5,000.

"Malnutrition is on the rise," Kweyu said. "There is no nutritional program going on except for ... food supplements" distributed by aid agencies to local hospitals. "The biggest problem is that we don't have that now."

Rain was supposed to come this month, but in this part of Kenya it has not. Day after day, flat round clouds gather in the hazy afternoon sky, and the heat creates mirages of lakes and puddles on hot, dusty roads. But there is no water, and there is no rain in the forecast, according U.N. meteorologists.

To survive, people mount plastic containers on donkeys, on camels, or on women's shoulders, and march for hours, sometimes days, seeking the giant water-filled black canisters set up along main roads by international aid groups. On the main highway from Garissa to the Kenyan capital Nairobi, desperate families flag down speeding cars, pleading for water.

Hussein Delmah, an aging herder, said he had walked 50 miles to a water distribution point some 30 miles north of Jerirot from the pasture where he, his wife and 10 children live, his donkeys laden with dozens of plastic cans he was filling up.

"All of my cows, and all of my neighbors' cows have died," he said, resting before embarking on the 32-hour journey back. Delmah still has some goats left in the bush, but he has been unable to sell them at village markets to raise money for food.

"They are too emaciated," he said. "No one wants to buy them."

Cattle carcasses decompose by the side of the road Delmah had traveled, their scarce rotting flesh carried off by hyenas and marabou stork. A putrid stench laces the air around them.

"If it rains, my biggest concern is that there will be an outbreak of disease because of all the dead animals," Kweyu said.

Already, health care officials have registered outbreaks of pneumonia, measles, tuberculosis and malaria. But it is impossible to track down the number of people affected, said Khadija Abdalla, the chief pediatrician at the Garissa Provincial General Hospital, because nomads rarely go to hospitals.

"The culture here is such that the hospital is not the first place to come," Abdalla said. "They use spiritual methods, herbs. A lot of mothers are dying at home."

Isaaq said her youngest son, 1-year-old Yahia, recently contracted pneumonia. But the nearest hospital is 12 miles away -- too far for the mother who herself is almost constantly hungry, she said.

Besides, Isaaq also has to collect water for her family. The nearest source is the Tana River, whose crocodile-infested water has tested positive for tuberculosis, CARE workers say. Men wade into the water to bathe armed with foot-long machetes, for protection.

The women wade in unarmed, and the river carries their high-pitched voices downstream as they drink thirstily from the stream and fill 5-gallon canisters with muddy, yellow water before hiking back to Jerirot, 4 miles away.

Outside her globe-shaped hut, made of sticks and straw, Isaaq poured some of the murky water into a tin bowl to boil, as her children gathered for their first hot meal of the day. Isaaq's husband was away, trying to sell charcoal for money to buy sugar and tea leaves.

Before she started cooking, Isaaq poured some of the rice in a bag and carried it to the house next door. Her neighbor's family had not received any food aid that day.

"The other migrants," Isaaq explained. "I need to share this food with them."

She paused in the doorway of her house, brought her delicate hand to her forehead, and considered the remaining grain.

"It will last 20 days instead of a month," she said.

How to help

A number of international charities are aiding famine victims in East Africa. Here are mailing addresses and Web sites: CARE